The present invention relates to a system and method for generating and setting up protection routes in a fiberoptic network of synchronous optical network (SONET/SDH) switches before any failures occur in the network.
Networks, both computer and telephone, have been around for many years. As the use of networks increased over time, so has the need for more bandwidth. Fiberoptic networks were developed to meet this need and transmit at high data rates. SONET was developed to be a standard for fiberoptic transmission.
An example, current SONET network is shown in FIG. 1. The nodes in this network have no information about other nodes in the network. Nodes are typically add/drop multiplexors (ADM). This network requires a system administrator to set up connection routes between end system 100 and end system 150 through ADMs 110-140. The system administrator may program the route to be from origination ADM 110 through intermediate ADM 120 to the destination ADM 130, and must program each ADM to pass information in this manner. If a failure occurs in any one of the connections, the system administrator must manually reroute the connections by reprogramming the ADMs.
The network described in the related application mentioned above, “Routing and Signaling in a SONET Network,” allowed for automatically creating a topology of the network and generated a route between ports. When a network failure occurred, the origination node calculated an alternative or protection route.
There currently does not exist a method or system for calculating and setting up protection routes prior to failure in the network.